Well continuing my previous post Getting My Lock ready to Raid at 80 an lets cover some of the other pieces of gear and weaponry.

Just a quick note.  You may have items from BC that you got from heroics/dungeons/pvp.  Those items may be superior to these if they have lots of sockets and you can gem them right.  So always compare and shot around.  And don't vendor gear until you are certain that it is inferior to something else.

I saw this on wowhead.com, great video.  Want to make you play a rogue :).


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

Well I've hit level 80 over Christmas.  It was a great achievement.  Now I can begin raiding and doing heroics.  Some of my favorite things to do in WoW, especially with my guild.

First and the most important thing though is gear.  The guild may be ready to do Nax, but I may not be. My philosophy on gear is:

• Get things that are not too valuable, since they will be replaced. Don't overspend on gear that may be replaced on the first drop in that heroic/first raid run.


• Get gemmed and enchanted, but once again don't go overboard, you will replace things.  Go for the cheaper versions for starting gear.


• Get as close to your Hit Cap as possible - with three points into talents into destro and affliction hit talents you need 365 Hit to be hitcapped.  Who cares how much spell power you have if your Dots are not landing where they supposed to and your shadowbolts are flying off to the side.


• Balance your gear.  I don't believe glass cannon locks.  You're mana should be OK to cast a few things, your stamina should give you enough points to life tap occasionally and also to survive a tough fight or pull where healer may be overtaxed.  A lock is not a mage, and thus should not be bust damage then dead (no offense to our mage counterparts I hope).

I've always read in many books that setting goals will drive you to achieve better and faster.  Here is an interesting true story on having a burning goal. -

This happened in wintergrasp.  My first time there.  I'm runnig around exploring when I notice saronite nodes here and there.  Mind you this is the first time i mined saronite.  Even then my mining was in the upper 430's from mining the cobalt.  So i am just running around and my mining is at 442.  Suddenly I run into a Titanium node.   My thoughts - OH MY GOD! I run up to mine it only to find out that I'm too low, need 450 mining.  I panic, then I decide to quickly run around and mine the saronite nodes, I only need 8.

So I'm running around, and getting the saronite.  There is tons of it in that zone.  And guess what, I fin anouther node of Titanium.  OH MY GOD.  So I pray pray noone ( especially some alliance toon) will find it before I get to 450.

Well to make the longs torry short, I did not get the titanium nodes :(.  I got to 450 and right at that moment anouther horde player got to them.  I walked away from there with 450 mning though, and 3 stacks of saronite.

Well my warlock is almost 80.  Can't wait to get there.  Not because I want to rush to 80 but simply most of my guild mates are at 80 and are constantly running heroics and beginning to raid.  I really enjoy running instances with my guild and thus feel left out.  So I will focus on doing quests and focusing on leveling that last level ASAP.  Then i can slow down and continue doing quests to get more lore and help my reputations.

I really enjoy questing in Northrend.  The quests are beautifully tied into the lore that you get to explore.  Plus the mechanics of operating machines, guns, flying dragons etc are really cool.  My next toon to get into Northrend will start off in the other entry level zone so I can do all the quests there.

As far as my other two favorite alts, my AOE mage and paladin, I also want to get back to play them.  I think my goal is to get my mage to 50 so that I can level my enchanting for DE purposes.  Then I will work on the paladin.  I do want to havea  healer class in end game.  However, I did get tired oh my druid, who is now 49.  Druid healer was my original goal, but I think i might go with a paladin instead.  I love AOE grinding and questing.  It's just too much fun to pass up.

This is a follow up post to my previous entry regarding AOE and your Alts.  I've been AOE grinding with my frost mage and my protection paladin, and all I have to say is that AOE grinding is better then ever.  The Frost Mage is a lot of fun with the fact that Blizard now crits.  With correct talent (here is the talent build I am using), and the glyph that allows for extra damage to the MOB before they break out of frost nova, that blizzard will crit quite a few times.  In fact looking at some videos from the past of a mage a bout my level (mid 40s) grinding with AOE and Blizzard I can say that my blizzard does double if not triple damage now, thus killing the MOBs on the second wave.

Paladins are even in a better situation.  It is easier to manage seals and judgements, and do additional DPS.  Plus the change to Blessing of Sanctuary to move it from DPS to mana regenaration is great, I no longer run out of mana while I'm AOE grindnign and can use more DPS abilities that relie on mana.  Here is my build for paladin.

The conventional wisdom with all the recent patches is that it's much more productive to quest then to grind.  Even when it comes to AOE grinds, it's still better to just do the quest.  Perhaps that is true.  But what if you have an alt who you just use to DE things.  He's level 44 and you don't feel like doing quests which you've already done recently with two other alts.
Well if he's a mage, why not AOE grind.  I've tried this with my mage when I was in my level 20's.  At that point I did not like it at all.  In fact I hated the whole frost things.  Now at 44 and with tons and tons of rested XP, why not AOE a bit now and then and get to level 50, while I keep leveling my main through the Northrend, and take my time there to enjoy the quests.

So I've specked my mage frost AOE, and some initial AOEing proved to be quite fun.  It's soooo nice to have the ice barrier.  Before it, it was always a very close call when I did AOE.  Now it's much more practical and safer.  I will tweak the spec tonight, and will do some more murlock killing.

At the same time, it gives me an idea to about my other alts.  My paladin can also gain a few levels this way.  In fact he was my first AOE successful experiement, I leveled him and did most of the questing using a proteciton spec.  My biggest question is can I do the same with my druid.  I've read some posts, and it may be possible to grind him as AOE.  I should try feral, and balance perhaps to see which is more viable.

Well, Amazon got it right, I've got my Wrath of the Lich King Collectors Edition today.  Can't wait to get home and play! :D

Well,  it's been a rocky week for WoW.  After all the issues with the servers, they all died after maintenance and pretty much were out for the whole day on 11/11/08.  Sad, but true.

Wrath is out tomorow.  I'm crossing my fingures it will be smooth playing.  I ordered a collectors edition from Amazon.com and I'm praying I get it tomorow :D!

I can't wait for Thursday to be here.  Wrath is coming out and I'm very exited to begin leveling my main in the new zone.  I've had the beta key for quite a while, but I've avoided playing the starter zones with the copy of my main - Moramor.  Instead I've experimented with the Blizzard premade level 80 copies.  So I've purposely missed all the content in the begging of Northrend to enjoy it better when expansion comes out.
For now, I've been doing a bit of raiding with the guild.  We've downed first three bosses in Mt. Hijal, that was fun.  I've also been leveling my druid a bit.  I just enjoy playing with him.  He's also has inscription that I'm leveling along with him.  I've been also trying to get rid of all of my stuff I've been hoarding in my banks.  So far so good.  The only thing I can't to be able to get rid of is the spell cloth.  Nobody wants it.  Primal mooncloth went well, and I'm making the 28 slot soulshard bags from the shadowweave cloth and they are selling as well.

Inscription prices are dropping like the Stock Market.  Now that there are tons of people who do inscription, there are too many glyphs in the market.  The herb prices are still high though since demand for them is now easing up at this point.  If you want to have a good bundle of cash for the Wrath, drop one of your professions and pick up herbalism and just leveling it to max.  All the herbs you gather in the process will make you rich.

As far as my copy of Wrath, i've ordered a collector's edition from Amazon.com.  It should be delivered on the release day.  I hope it is, since I took the next day off, and would have to drive to work to pick it up if it comes late.  Cross my fingers :D.

The wrath of the Leach King is only a week away (I'm very exited).  Meanwhile, since all the raid bosses got really nerfed in the patch 3.02 my guild has been running ZA in the way we've ran Kara before - like all the time :D.  I've so far completed ZA 3 times.  Here are some tips I can give to others in regards to things I've learned.  Most of these things are beyond the basic strategy, and will be more specific to warlocks and perhaps other spell ranged DPS:

I'd like to write a few words regarding my opinion of Warhammer online.  I've purchased the game last month, and played it for about two weeks.  There are many things I liked and some things I did not like.

Here are some things worth mentioning:

Public quests - this was a very cool idea.  You get into an area, most likely because another quest sent you there and suddenly you're killing of monsters is contributing the the overall quest goal.  Everyone in that area contributes to that goal, without needing to be in the group.  There are stages, where the last stage is usually a boss that needs to be put down by at least 5-7 players.  Everyone participating gets to roll for the loot, with the once who participated more will then get a bonus added to the roll before final numbers are determined.  This is alot of fun when there are alot of people in the area.  However, if there are no other people in that area during that time, or you're playing off peak hours, these quests are undoable by your self.

I've decided to switch my WoW Blog Theme to reflect my playing with my Druid.

Today Medivh server has been down all day long.  Very dissapointing since I wanted to level my druid more. Meanwhile I've been playing on the beta server.  I've been doing some PVP in the battle grounds as well as some PVE agains level 80 mobs.  Here is what I found:

Druid - Love PVP, PVE is also cool.  I've respecked heavy balance and a bit of healing.  Moonkin for PVE and Moonking/Healer for PVP.  I like the PVE, but PVP is wicked.  The Hot Healing is soo cool in PVP.

Mage - Love PVE.  I specked fire so far, but it's awsome.  I can two shot a mob easily.  However in PVP i did not enjoy it.  Probably because for PVP i need to spec frost.  Next time I'll try that.

Shaman - Tried all three specs, not very successfull in PVP, and PVE is kinda boring.  Shamans are too confusing with all the totems and spells.  Not my cup of tea.
Hopefully my regular server will be up tomorow to play my druid.

Oh by they way, cleared out ZA for the first time with my lock.  It was cool.  Great group with my guildies.

I've decided to pick up inscription on my druid.  My druid, who's my newest favorite Alt. is the second character I've created when I originally began playing WoW.  He fell out of my favor, and became my main banking and AH toon.  Originally he was herbalist/alchemist.  However, I've droped alchemy and leveled enchanting on him to DE my unneeded greens and do DE arbitrage in AH.

I was playing around with the idea of picking up inscription on my druid, since he had herbalism already.  The other day I was scanning the AH for the glyphs for sale, and after buying a couple, my decision was sealed.  Today I've droped enchanting ( I'll level it back up to a needed level to DE on anouther alt), and began my journey to gather some lower level herbs and level inscription.

The two glyphs I've picked up were:

Glyph of Rake

Glyph of Rejuvenation

Both glyphs are great and pretty useful for my leveling as a druid.  One will help with the runners when I'm in cat form ( most of the time), the other will help me during those times when you're almost dead, and throw a Rejuvenations on yourself before going back into cat/bear form to finish the mob off.

Right now people are making a lot of money with inscription, simply because it's new and market is not yet saturated.  People can charge what ever they want.  Also, the minor glyphs are not trainable, you have to discover them.  They are selling for ridiculous prices right now.  In the future Inscription may not be as profitable as it is right now.  However, at this stage of WoW, i have plenty of ways to make Gold in WoW even without a crafting profession.  So inscription will definitely will be useful in playing and leveling.

I hope that in the later game there will be glyphs that are discovery only or reputation, that will make this profession profitable as well.  So far, back to gathering peace blooms and silverleafs :).

I have not blogged lateley.  Mainly because of not palying as much, as well as playing Warhammer Online.  I'll write about Warhammer in anouther post.

Playing Beta, I'm beggining to really enjoy PVP with a premaid level 80 Restro Druid.  Resto Druids are a lot of fun.  It's almost like playing an afliction warlock only in reverse.  Hot Hot Hot.

I've began to level my druid, who has been my bank, and I'm actually enjoing it.  Druids are weared.  Either you love them or you hate them.  I'm starting to love mine.  Maybe my next alt.  But hey, they never survive past 45. LOL

Well see.

[caption id="attachment_72" align="alignnone" width="364" caption="My Pally at 41"][/caption]

My paladin is over 40.  I've been having a lot of fun gridning 2 to 3 mobs at a time in the Stranglehorn Valey.  Paley AOE is a lot of fun.  Now that I've got the Holy Shield and a new shield with a mithril spike on it, this will be even more fun.  Mobs drop like stones.  :)

I've been actually realy enjoing playing with my pally.  I think I will try to get him to 70 before expancion comes out.   Get's me invovled while we are all waiting for wrath to comes out.

The new patch 3.0 will come out soon, and i'd like to see how it will change my gameplay since it will have a lot of changes to pallies.

Now my goal is to outfit him with plate.  It seems that at level 40 many other paladings and warriors rush into the AH to get their plate, only to find out prices in the 20 and 30 gold range for basic plate green.  Just got to watch out for bargains and snatch them up.

I was checking my email when I noticed - AN EMAIL WITH MY WRATH BETA KEY! :D

This is really cool. I was getting tired of WoW, becaues my guild's scheduled raids have not been happening due to lack of attendance. So this will give me something to do. This is especially cool since I'll be able to play around with some of the classes I always wanted to have in the end game. Now I can see if I really do want them.

I am starting to get bored with WoW. I feel that it's like a relationship that is beginning to go stale. Last night our 25 man raid for either Gruul or Mag did not happened again due to the lack of people/interest. When someone offered to go do Kara instead, I declined. There is only so many times you can do Kara before it becomes a bore. This is especially since I'm fully in my T4 set with Moramor, and there are only two things that I actually could use as and upgrade from that dungeon, the bracers from Maden and the dagger from Prince.

So, here comes the challenge. What do you do with your time if you stop playing WoW. I was mulling over to pre-ordering Warhammer Online and trying the open Beta. Besides that, there are not many other things that can be as wholesome and entertaining as WoW for the low price. At least none that come to my mind right now. What to do?

What do you do with all the free time in your life if you eliminate WoW completely. WoW took up a lot of that free time in the past. If I would eliminate WoW form my life, I would either have to find anouther hobby that would require as much time and commitment, or I would have to come up with multple smaller hobbies or activities.

One of the challenges I had with multiple hobbies/activities, is that I take on too many and get burned out. With wow, you can scale back or intensify your time or effort commitment. With smaller hobbies/activities you would have to drop one or two. The drama that sometimes entales leaving something is never pleasant. I guess this is a new era, and an interesting turning point.

While clearing out the mail boxes on my bank alts, I was thinking to my self - Wow! What a mess. It seems that it never goes away. The more I try to organize it the more it seems to become more disorganized. Then I through back to my room, my office space, my clothes in the closet. Here is the thing, they are all in the same "state".

My paladin, which is right now my favorite alt, recently hit 30. Besides getting my cool free mount, I've also decided to give AOE grinding a try. Up to level 30 I was leveling as Retribution. Having some nice gear from Shadowfang keep, which I ran with my level 70 friend, was decently fun. But, I was really curious about AOE after I hit level 30.

I've been leveling my Paladin a bit, and I'm quite enjoying him. He's already at level 28, and I can't wait to get my mount at 30. However, in this post I'd like to mention why I love pallys when I group with them.

Salvation - Can you say shoot without worrying about threat? As a decently T4 geared warlock I get spoiled with this pally buff. If I'm in a 5 man, or god forbid Kara without a pally, not having this buff really rally gimps my DPS because just by casting all my DoTs my threat jumps a lot. You should see me begging for this buff all the time.

Well, I don't have much to post on that comes to mind and does not involve too much time :). Presently I've got into a nice guild that raids a lot (by my standards). I've been doing Mag and Grull, and we even did some trash and got to first boss on Mt. Hijal. So it was fun and I got a nice clock from trash mob drop.

I've been also leveling my druid, who is my bank/enchanter. I want to get him to level 35 because i want to disenchant all those greens over 64 that i accumulated. They are becoming annoying in my mailbox "bank". I'm too lazy to find anouther Dissenchanter to DE them. Too many at this point.

I toyed with the idea of leveling my druid to 70. I respecked feral and was breezing through the mobs. My goal is that I want a end game healer. However, I don't know if I want to play my priest to 70 (currently in his high 30's). I find Druid Tree healing is really cool, but I don't find leveling druid pleasurable.

I've created a Pally and I think I will play with that character and level to 70. I find Pallys to be very self sufficient, and at the end of the game they can Heal or Tank. I think they will also benefit a lot from all the additional Plate gear with caster attributes that they will share with Death Knights. I find leveling them interesting - a new challenge.

My Mage who I finally learned how to play is gathering dust at level 41. I think I got to a point where it was too easy to play him now that he's a fire specked. I guess I want something different Endgame, and Mage is too similar to a warlock as far as gear/damage etc. Paladin offers different dynamics to learn. Plus I can Heal (I guess I'm a closeted healer).

So here is anouther one. I work for JetBlue Airways in NY. JetBlue is soon opening up a new terminal at JFK airport - terminal 5 aka T5. So the other day when my coworker started to talk about the T5 what do you think I started to think about. If you don't know, then yo don't play enough! ;).

Here another video from Madcow Studios. I like this one even more :D:

Well a few days into WoW on linux (Ubuntu-8 ) only, and I broke down and installed Windows XP on my machine. Here are two biggest reasons:

1. In linux, my mouse pointer is software rendered, since we are emulating a windows program in linux. This is fine and dandy when I was playing by my self, but when I grouped up with 25 other people to do Mag and Grul, I saw the challenge with the software rendering of my mouse. When we hit a lot of visual lag due to everyone casting spells, the mouse pointer would move in slow motion or I would sometimes completely lose it on the screen. I had to quickly relearn how to use hot keys. This I think was a decisive point to play WoW under windows, where even though frame rate might be low, mouse pointer would move smoothly anyways since it is hardware controlled.

2. The second piece in linux that did not work was Vent. When i was in WoW i could hear vent, but could not hit a key to speak. This i suspect could have been fixed if I did some more research.

To sum up my experience with WoW in linux, is that it has been very impressive. Besides the raid experience, soloing or grouping with a small group worked very well under linux. This may be due to the recent release of the Wine 1.0 version. About 6 months ago, wow was almost unplayable in Linux with decent graphical settings and resolution set to my native 20 inch flat panel. It is very good now, where when I solo I get almost the same performance I would get in Windows XP.

I think it is important to note that it would be great if Blizzard can release a native linux WoW client. Until then, WindowsXP for me as far as WoW. Although I will continue to mess around with Ubuntu linux and maybe find more tweaks for WoW in linux.

Well, my windows died on me, again!  I think it has something to do with the NFTS system.  When i try to access the windows partition under Linux the C: drive can't be read, and Linux says it is still "in use".

So since I don't really feel like reinstalling Windows XP, or buying the new Vista, I decided to go with Ubuntu 8 linux that I had installed on my machine earlier. My computer use is not that demanding as far as variety of things.  I play WoW and browse the Internet.  The net is easy on Linux.  How about WoW?

Well I'm happy to report that with the latest ubunty release (8) and the newest Wine emulator software WoW runs as well as it does under Windows.  So thus begins my biggest experiment of all - life without Windows!

If you are interested in running your WoW under Linux here is a great post on how to do it in Ubuntu (which is very easy to use once you learn where to pull a document or two from the net):

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft

By the way, I did not install WoW under linux.  I simply copied the whole WoW folder from windows into linux, that's the easier way.  Just edit your config file in WTF folder to openGL and you're good to go!

My life as a lock is full of ups and downs.  I though that  I finally found a cool guild I can raid with, only for the guild mates to be nonexistent online as soon as summer began.  :(

Out of boredom and desperation and also because I've been enjoying my fire specked mage I resepecked my warlock destro (20/0/41).  I have to say that the play style becomes very similar to a mage.  But it did not feel like a lock anymore.

From my personal opinion Warlocks have their biggest and unique strengths in the demonology and affliction trees.  Destruction is fun, but it's very short lived.  You cannot do tings with destro you can do with demonology or affliction, such as non stop grinding or taking down an elite mob by your self.  Plus if you want to blast things, you can always go mage, but only lock can have a unique DoTs and or pet/blast.  I'm back to affliction and I love it!

I've been suffereing with my mage for a long time, trying to pick up playing with him only to get frustrated.  From the very beggining I named him Moroz, which means frost in Russian.  I inteded for him to be frost from the beggining.  I've tried so many time to respec him into pure frost frost and arcane and frost for AOE gridning.  Yet even after I started to have fun with the frost AOE, i got bored of that, and still got owned by a mob a few levels above me.

Finally, finally at level 30 i've specked into pure fire.  Boy-oh-boy.  Things are pretty easy now.  I don't run out of mana, and mob goes down pretty quickly.  Perhaps fire is the way to level a mage after all. :)

When someone who does not play wow, for some reason say - "Jack of all trades. Master of non!". You automatically say to your self - "A Shaman".

I've rediscovered Fishing. Now my fishing previously was at about 295, which I got there to get my cooking above 350. Then i kinda stopped fishing. I did not feel like going back to Azeroth to fish, and yet I found fishing in Outland a bit tedious since it would take 8-9 fish to go to the next level. Well the other day I wanted a different experience form WoW, so i logged in as Moramor, went to Cenarion Expedition's outpost in Zangarmarsh, bought some lure and began fishing. I actually found it fun.

After catching about 30 fish in open water, I started to run around and fishing in the pools that are sprinkled all around the water in that area. Well, let me tell you, it was actually fun, and profitable. I was catching trunks from the floating debris pools, including the Golden Darter, which sells very very well in AH in raw form or in the fish sticks, which grant +healing bonus. There is also a fish which is gray in quality, but sells for 6 gold!

Finally, I was also pulling out motes of water. These darn motes which when I was making my frozen set I needed so much. I used to kill tons of Water Elementals for those motes. I could have just fished, and got motes, fishing experience and fish for my troubles. Oh well. I am going to try now to fish the pure water pools to see how many motes I get there. Motes from fish and wreckage pools are uncommon, but still come pretty well.

It seems fishing is not something people level or bother with. Well from my recent experience, I would say that you should level it, and use it to get cools stuff and profit at the same time.

Here is a cool site I found related to fishing in WoW: El's Extreme Anglin' - WoW Fishing Guide

Something terrible is happenning on my server!  There is a shortage of the basic JC cut Gems.  I recently got a new pair of Pants in Kara with Three yellow sockets.  When I ran to the AH to pick up some nice +6 hit yello gems, to my horror there are none.  There are also not too many rare gems in the AH either.  I usually don't look too much at those, since I careful what money I spend.  However, I've noticed there are not many of cut rare gems either.  I've also see tons of uncut undommong gems in AH.

I brought this horrible chain of event to my guild mates.  A few of them laughed and said that they guy who used to be the main Horde Gem cutter on our server quick and went to play Age of Connan!  This is terrible.  Othrer Jewelcrafter have to step up, or we will be gemless :(.

If you are a Jewelrafter on Medivh Horde server, step up and start cutting gems and making money and help us socket our gear!

This is not specifically WoW related, but it still touches on it a bit. I've been recently having some chellenges with my DSL provider - Verizon.  These challenges resulted in either me having rediculous lag or disconects in WoW or no connection at all.  I'm happy to say, I got RoadRunner yestaday, here is why, or as you can say why Verizon Sucks.  I'm putting all the rant behind the more line, so you don't have to read it if you don't want to.

I've once heard a quote that said - Success is gradual progress towards a worthy ideal, or goal. In World of Warcraft, when you level you character, you leveling is that measured gradual progress to a goal. The goal can be the next level, level 58 to go hit Outland, or even level 70. Either way with every quest and every Mob you are progressing. Once you hit level 70, that stops, at least for now. So what measures your success now?

Ok, so here is another one:

You know you play to much WoW when you tell you're friend while he's driving  that you have to go Bio. Thank God he aslo plays WoW and undestands what you mean. :0

Last night I played with my new guild and we cleared almost the entire Karazhan, including NightBane, but excluding the Netherspite and I've got my Helm of the Falen Champion and 20 Badges of justice.  Although I've ran the top portion of this raid before, this was my first full one.  Pictures to come.

Kara was fun.  I think what also made it fun was a great group.  My new guild is very cool.

I was looking over the statistics on www.warcraftrealms.com and I noticed how some races are more popular then others. Just recently I've decided to level a new horde priest, and I've picked Troll as the race of my new priest. Well trolls is one of the realy underplayed races. It seems that the races that people neglect to play are the Trolls, Orcs, Draeni, and dwarves. The Horde side is also more balanced then the alliance. On the alliance majority of players are either human or nigh elf.

This made me think of the saying how people usually pick the pretty races to play with more then the ugly ones. And if you think it through, the underplayed races are not the best looking in the game.

I am actually glad that I picked troll as my character. A new experience, and a unique character to level with. They may not be the best looking toons around, but the capoeira dance just gets me. Plus I think it's important to not be like everyone else right?

I've been playing WoW for quite some time now. But only recently have I joined the "club" of endgame play. Since now I have a level 70 character I began to "re-learn" the game. It seems that when it comes to traditional roles in this game most of the characters level their toon based on a specific spec or two that allowes for the fastest leveling. This could be most damage or the most resource efficient way to level. However, that all changes once you get to 70 because now characters begin to specialize.

I will reveal my ignorance and will say that for quite some time I though that Priests are the best healers in the game. The other healers had their ability as a nice-to-have. So I never thought of druids, shamans or paladins as "healers". I begin to see my error. Running some of the level 70 dungeons I begin to see the awsome healing powers of the healing specked Druids and Shamans and even Paladins. In fact, I have seen some encounters where Shamans or Druids performed better then Priests. Once again, this was due to my ignorance, but I believe that that ignorance is widespread.

The the "world" in World of Warcraft is really that - it's a world.  The game is huge as far as the territories and places it contains.  With the addition of Outland and also the new Blood elf island it keeps getting bigger.  So what is you favorite zone?  What's the least favorite one?

When I just started to play WoW i used to love running around exploring new zone once I got to that level.  Since most of this was done pre-mount it took a long time, and was one of the reasons it took me forever to level my first toon to 70.  It was just so cool and interesting.  I do less of it now, since it's all about leveling quickly and efficiently.  Still, there are zones I like more and others that I like less.

Besides the different theme, each zone very often also has it's own theme music and it's own unique feel.  One of my favorite zones in Outland, for example, is the Zangarmarsh.  I love the colors, the theme, and the music it has. It's very calm and tranquil.

One of the zones that I enjoy looking at, but hate playing in is Ashenvale.  Main reason being that is so hard to get around.  You look at the map and it seems easy to get from point A to point B.  But then you find out that there are all of these terrain obstacles and you got to go around. And usually by running around in that manner you run into tons and tons of Mobs, usually beasts.  I get very frustrated in that zone.

What's your experience like?

I did not realize that in order to comment on my site you had to register.  I've seen that on another site and it is not comfortable to use.  I've changed options.   It is easier to comment, so please do! :)

There was a really cool change in the 2.4 Patch that totally went over my head until about last week. Since it is becoming harder and harder for newly minted level 70 to compete with people who went through three seasons of Arena, something had to be done.

Blizzard made some basic PVP gear set available for purchase from the Outland faction vendors. So, all that grinding for Thrallmar or Cenarion Expedition you have done can now pay off. You have to be honored with the faction, which is the same reputation you need to buy a heroic key. The cost of each piece is also quite minor, on average 10 gold for each piece. At level 70 that's a few daily quests that can be done in 20 mins. There is a set for every class.

I've finally got my troll priest to the same level as my human priest, that I've shelved for now. And just for kicks I decided to respec him into shadow to get the MindFlay. Well I ran around and tried it out, and I did not like it. I was much more happy with my discipline build, and I went right back to it.

You know you play too much WoW when...

I think I'm going to start this category. I just thought of one. You know you play too much WoW when you use emotes instead of smiley faces at your job's interoffice chat client.

YourCoworker: This is ridiculous. I can't believe they give me all this stuff at the last moment. How am I going to get it all done? :(

You: /cry

YourCoworker: What?

You: I mean :(

Do you like to do battle grounds? I'm not a very big fan of them or PVP in general. I am more of a casual quest-by-my-self type of a guy. However, I remember I once got addicted to the Alterac Valey and would play it for weeks non stop. Oh the exhilaration!

I still play it once in a while, but it's not as fun anymore. I was thinking about it recently, why is that?

Well for one thing, they've changed this battle ground three or more times since my "fun days" there. The game is different now, and you play and win differently. Still, that is not it.

Well my friend finally convinced me to come to the dark side. He is leveling his priest as a blood elf, and kept commenting that we would not be able to play together. So I gave in and created a Horse priest. I've decided to go with the troll because I've never really leveled a troll race, so the starting zone experience would be new to me. And of course the other biggest reason is the cool dance - can't beat Capoeira! Since i did capoeira for a bout a year, I would be doing capoeira vicariously. Hmm... Maybe one day I should actually go play some capoeira in the real world too :D.

I'm also planning to level as shadow. To many that would have been a no brainer. To me it was not. I was leveling my alliance priest as discipline. I've even convince my level 40 priest friend to switch from leveling holy to discipline. He loves it. I'll go shadow to level 40 and try it out. If I don't like it I'll switch to discipline.

The other day, I decided to create a brand new undead priest, and quickly level her to the same level as my human priest, who is almost level 20. After spending about an hour and getting the new priest to level 19, I got bored. Combined with being tired, and also Medivh server being extremely laggy, I logged off.

The realization hit me the next day. I love playing WoW, I hate leveling. What is the difference? One you do for enjoyment of the game. You play the game while you increase your experience and level. The other you do as quickly as possible to get to 70.

Well I hate leveling, even to catch to my friend level 40 toon, or to my own toon on opposite faction who's level 19. Leveling sux! Goes back to my post about life before or after 70.

I think I'm done leveling. I'm gonna play from now on, no matter how long it takes me to get to level 70.

Yestaday was my first day of running and instance as a healer. I ran my human priest Svyatoslav through the Deadmines. We had a cool group, and ran quickly through the instance. Even though I had terrible lag on my computer, I was able to heal just fine.

It was actually fun, to let other people dish out the damage, and my job being only to heal them and pick up the loot. It also gave me a good deal of experience. I think dungeons for a healer is a great way to level and get great gear.

I've been thinking about this topic a lot. When does life begin in WoW? Does it begin when you create your new character or does it begin when that character reaches level 70, or at least 60? Why am I thinking all of this now? Well because I finally got my main Warlock to 70 a few months ago, and now it has been almost like a midlife crisis for me in WoW.

I remember when I just started to play World of Warcraft a few years ago I leveled my character slowly, taking time to run and do all the quests. Sometimes I would run to other zones just to explore them. Needless to say, it took me forever to level. I also made tons of mistakes along the way, and would learn from those mistakes. This was before I discovered how to look up quests on Thottbot or effectively make gold in the game. But I was pretty exited to sit down and explore the WoW universe.

Just wanted to test this plug in to show some of my WoW shots stored on Picasa Web Gallery.

So I switched to Alliance to get a fresh start with my WoW. I've been playing horde all this time, and I think I need a change. I've been leveling my Draeni Shaman, Ruadia. She's a lot of fun and already at level 33. But I'm intrigued by the Priest class. So today I made my Human Priest, Svyatoslav.

I've been playing WoW for a few years now.  After playing the game for so long you start asking your self why do I play?  Well maybe not as much of that, but how do I keep fun and excitement in my game after doing so much of the game already.  So I think that is why I am drawn to playing some of the classes that I used to totally avoid before.  Healing, playing in groups a lot, not dealing a lot of damage?  All of these were a big no-no for me in the past.  Being a warlock allowed me to solo most of the quests, and just be in the groups when I really needed to be there, and still be just an DPS, no decisions or responsibilities on my shoulders.

Playing a healing class, or a hybrid class is more of a challenge for me, since it will be a totally different play style.  So that is the fun and excitement to learn how to play something completely different.  I guess also to learn how to be more social in the game and group more often.  And grouping is an art in itself!

So I was at work on my lunch break checking out the WoW Machinima clips on WoWInsider, and I found this one. I loved it! Here it is to share with you:

When it comes to making money while leveling your WoW character, most of the people will advise to take up two gathering professions until you're way into your 40 and I would even advise to keep it into your 60's. I am actually leveling my Draeni Shaman in this manner, and boy do I have tons and tons of gold :D.  But is this a good advice, and is it the best in all cases?

If you chose to start leveling a crafting profession without having another toon to provide you with extra cash you will be a very very poor WoW soul. This I've learned the hard way when I just began my WoW journey. It is possible to enjoy the items you craft while you level, but you will be very tight on money.

Blizzard came up with two cute pranks on their website today. One is creating a rocking Bard Hero Class for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and the other with a console game that reminds us of the 1980's computer video game age.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/bard/bardclass.xml




http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/moltencore/

So I got the set. I pushed really hard for a few days, and sacrificed a bit to push my tailoring to 375, and finally created my robe. The set is pretty cool. All of my curses and shadow bolts return a bit of life back to me. I've also re-socketed all of my pieces to add +hit bonuses for raiding and instance runs.



I will say one thing. It was a lot of work and resources to push my tailoring to 375. Tons and tons of mats. There are many people who say that it for a clothie it is almost a required choice to have tailoring to make one of the epic tailoring sets. I don't know if I agree though. Yes, the set allows you to have great gear without doing much instances or raiding. However, it is not a cheap set, and is very time and effort consuming.

Here is my main dilemma with the set. I've invested so much time and resources into it. What did I get it for? It's not a PVP set, so it's not really for PVPing. It's a PVE and Raiding set. But I am not big on doing instances and raiding. It is so time consuming, and frustrating to get a good group and for everything to go smoothly. Add to that the fact that my family members want immediate attention while I'm in a dungeon, and it equals pretty frustrating experience. So, for regular questing, I would have been fine with stuff I got as quest rewards and stuff tailors desperately sell in AH to help level their tailoring. It now seems almost like a waste to me. Maybe I've been better with an epic flyer? :(

Recently my friend switched to playing horde, from playing Alliance. He finally saw the light! :) Actually the main reason he switched, was because he likes playing in the battle grounds and he was constantly losing there.

So he rolled a priest, and I rolled a Mage. We went with Undead first, but then rerolled to blood elves, for the aesthetic reasons. Well he's priest is of course at a much higher level then my Mage, since he plays him exclusively and I split my time between the warlock and the Mage.

Well after getting my Mage to level 24, I have to say I don't like playing with him. The nuke nuke nuke drink routine is not me! I am so spoiled with my warlock of grinding with no downtime, this drinking is very annoying. Also, if you get the mob on you, two hits and you're dead! So i can say that I'm dead a lot!

I think I'm rerolling a Shaman. I actually enjoyed levelling my Draeni Shaman, until my friend stoped playing the Alliance, and so did I.

So why shaman, well I like the idea of hitting with spells, but then being able to take the beating if needed, and also healing yourself. Similar to Druid ( which I have at level 22 and still found easier to play with then my Mage), but less switching around from for to form.

Shaman will be my utility character. I am not one of the people who loves to play with others too much, so a character who can take care of himself is what I need. A Warlock was that for me with Voidwalker, and especially once I got my Fellguard. I hope that Shaman can be his own utility knife.

I've been trying really hard to tailor my Frozen Shadoweave set for my Warlock. However, after spending tons and tons of money and time to either farm the primals or to buy them, I start questioning myself - is it worth the effort? It seems that I can probably find a lot of nice upgrades just doing the instances.

So far I got the shoulders and the boots, which are pretty nice. But they cost me a lot! I also made a huge mistake of making the shoulders twice ( i wanted to make the boots the second time). Finally the robe is not only very material intensive, but requires 375 tailoring. My tailoring is about 367. The only decent way to get up to 375 is to make imbued netherweave robe or tunic, which will be expensive to make and don't really sell that well.

So where am I going with all of this money talk? Don't I get enough money from questing? Well yes. However, I've set my eyes on the epic flyer, and I'm on NO BUYING policy until I get it! :( Let's hope that's soon. Until then, robe can wait, and I'll far the cloth to get my tailoring up.

Well, this is official, today I've got my warlock epic mount. Up to now I gave up on the idea of getting the Warlock epic mount and bought a regular epic skeleton horse. But then came my membership in my new guild, which now goes by the name The Forsaken. I got some very nice guildies and the other day another level 60 Warlock wanted to run thorough the Dire Maul and get his mount. I offered to "help", since I already have all the mats for the quest. Well the Guild Master, a level 70 Shaman and a recently hit 70 healing priest came along, and they also had the key, which is very important.

It took us no time to clear the pieces we needed and whack the boss at the spot for the summoning. Then came a challenge, I usually care a full soulbag full of soulshards. Unfortunately right before we went to Dire Maul, I came out of PVP and was short on Shards. Now, at level 70 I could not get more shards in DM because the Mob is too low for my level. Well my guildmates had to wait for 10 mins while I hearthed back to Terrokar forest and get some shads. They then summoned me back in and we went though the quest.

The summoning of the dreadsteed was very messy. Tons of demons running around, and you've got to keep up the three pieces flowing for the ritual. The shards I needed are for keeping up the three pieces floating in the air, making the summoning circle, and you need about 10 or more shards to keep it going. Thank God my guild mates were experienced, and have done this rituals before. It went like a charm. And now I've got my horse. :D very happy

Picture coming soon ...

I've finally hit level 70 on my main toon - Moramor. This is a tremendous and exiting point in my WoW career. I've got my basic flying mount and all!

However, now comes the question of what to do after level 70. One of the obvious things is to do endgame dungeons and raids. This will be a change for me since I usually prefer to quest alone. Another one would be to get tons of reputation, another would be to get cool gear. Maybe even do some serious PVP? One thing is certain, I've got to get my warlock epic mount! :)